The combination of multiple storage devices into distributed data storage capacity has proliferated in response to market demands for storing enormous amounts of data that can be readily retrieved in a fast, reliable, and efficient manner.
With continued demands for ever increased levels of storage capacity and data transfer throughput performance, there remains an ongoing need for improvements in the manner in which the storage elements in such data storage arrays are operationally managed in order to optimize the capacity and data throughput performance parameters while minimizing storage expense. It is to these and other related improvements that preferred embodiments of the present invention are generally directed.